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Over the last several decades, nationalist movements in liberal democracies have challenged their community's relationship with the state. One such case that has drawn relatively little attention is Puerto Rico. A peculiar feature of Puerto Rican politics is that powerful nationalism coexists with several distinct status options: a reform of the current Commonwealth, statehood (becoming an American state), free association and independence. This article examines the various sources for Puerto Rican nationalism and discusses the relationship between nationalism and each of the status options. It also explains why none of the options has succeeded in gathering majority support amongst Puerto Ricans and why, therefore, the constitutional status quo has so far remained on the island.

Drawing on the work of Richard Simeon and using the cases of equalization in Canada and Belgium's social security system, this article shows how nationalist ideas combined with institutional management structures, government formation rules and the configuration of party systems to condition the territorial dynamics around these two programmes. In Canada, resentment against equalization in many provinces, often because it is perceived as accommodating Québécois nationalism, has translated only into moderate pressures on the programme because federal parties have largely stayed away from this divisive issue and federal executive discretion over the programme has meant that provinces cannot force change. In Belgium, pressures on social security have been more intense because the absence of pan-Belgian parties has given greater resonance to Flemish nationalist ideas within the political system.

This article addresses the absence of a federal equalisation programme in the United States, which is a significant aspect of “American exceptionalism”. Comparing the United States with Australia and Canada, we argue that three factors are relevant when accounting for this absence. On one hand, we turn to two societal factors to explain why there was never much political appetite for the creation of a stand-alone equalisation programme in the United States, namely the lack of a direct threat to the territorial integrity of the United States after 1865 and the comparative weakness of the idea of social citizenship in that country. On the other hand, our analysis shows that key institutional features of American political institutions, particularly strong bicameralism combined with the absence of formal party discipline, help illuminate why it would have been difficult to create an equalisation programme even if there had been some societal pressures to do so.

Abstract. A key challenge for comparative politics is to explain the varying degrees of political conflict triggered by the territorial redistribution of financial resources. Federal systems pose this question particularly acutely since they typically operate equalization programs that generate different levels and patterns of intergovernmental conflict. For instance, in Canada equalization has generated serious conflict between federal and provincial governments whereas in Australia it has only led to low-level grumblings on the part of some states which have taken shots at others. This article sheds light on the causes for conflict around the territorial redistribution of financial resources by explaining why equalization has produced more severe intergovernmental conflict in Canada than in Australia. It argues that institutional factors linked to the governance structures of equalization and the nature of federalism are at the heart of the cross-national difference. More specifically, the presence of an arms-length agency administrating equalization in Australia compared to executive discretion over the program in Canada and the weaker status and lesser power of states in comparison to Canadian provinces means that equalization policy is more subject to political challenges in Australia than in Canada.

The relationship between nationalism and public policy remains largely unexplored. Focusing on the link between sub-state nationalism and social policy, this article formulates three main arguments. The first is that social policy is likely to factor into processes of identity- and nation-building spearheaded by sub-state nationalism, and that nationalist movements typically trigger pressures for the decentralization of social policy. The second is that recognizing the importance of this connection should not lead to hasty conclusions about the impact of societal and institutional pressures on public policy. Nationalism is not only a societal force; it is also a political construction that reflects broad institutional legacies. The third is that the historical sequence of nationalism and policy development may create institutional forces preventing the congruence between policies and ethno-linguistic boundaries, in spite of pressures emanating from nationalist movements. The analysis of Social Security politics in contemporary Belgium provides ground to these claims.

Findings of category-specific impairments have suggested that
human semantic memory may be organized around a
living/nonliving dichotomy. In order to assess implicit
memory performance for living and nonliving concepts, one group
of neurologically intact individuals participated in a cross-form
conceptual priming paradigm. In Block 1, pictures primed words
while in Block 2 words were used to prime pictures. Across all
phases of the experiment, subjects decided whether items
represented something which was living or nonliving, and response
times were recorded. Results revealed greater priming for living
concepts across both blocks. Greater priming for living concepts
may have occurred because of increased or prolonged conceptual
activation of these concepts. Results are discussed in the context
of theoretical accounts of the category-specific impairments
observed in brain-damaged populations. (JINS, 2003,
9, 796–805.)

Summary

Claims for recognition and autonomy have permeated politics in Belgium, Spain and Canada over the last several decades. The transformation in these states' party systems and the debates over their constitutional and institutional arrangements are signs that nationalist movements have been successful in putting their issues on the political agenda. Indeed, the emergence of autonomist or secessionist nationalist parties in Spain and Canada and the split on linguistic lines of the traditional Belgian parties have transformed the political landscape of these societies. These political parties have attempted to rearrange, with varying success, the constitutional and institutional framework. In turn, this framework has shaped their action, posing constraints and offering opportunities. While the action of political parties seeking recognition and autonomy for their communities has introduced an element of instability in the larger societies' political system, the response to their challenge has been instrumental in determining its ultimate consequences.

This chapter addresses two related questions. First, it will show how collective identities in Belgium, Spain and Canada have been institutionalized in partisan politics and how the political parties reflective of these identities have emerged to challenge the constitutional and institutional framework in which they operate. It will also show that these parties may transform a party system in a way that makes it an enduring source of instability.

The interest of philosophers in the politics of cultural identity was one of the most interesting developments in this field in the 1990s. Their involvement in an area dominated by historians, sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists2 has been particularly evident in Canada where scholars such as Will Kymlicka and Charles Taylor have shaped the way many academics understand cultural identity politics. These theorists have favoured a cultural approach to the phenomenon. They have established frameworks for understanding and managing multiethnic states that stress the inherent strength and meaning of culture.

The way spoken language is represented by orthographic structure is thought to influence the
cognitive reading mechanism for a language, and therefore language breakdown patterns should
reflect this. The present article focuses on two patients, both monolingual native Spanish
speakers, who were able to read words but showed great difficulty in reading nonwords. This
finding could be attributed to the fact that these patients were reading globally using a lexical
route. This pattern of reading behavior is known as phonological dyslexia. It has been argued that
lexical reading is not an option for Spanish readers since its orthography is highly regular. Our
findings contradict this hypothesis and support the view that cognitive reading mechanisms are
universal.

We develop the distinction between “referential” and “modalizing” aspects of language and describe their functional dissociation, as observed in various manifestations of aphasia and in the speech of hemispherectomy and commissurotomy patients. Such a frequently observable dissociation is taken to reflect certain cognitive and neurobiological distinctions that do not seem to be accounted for by the structurally motivated linguistic models currently utilized in neurolinguistic studies. The dissociation appears to generate fresh and original insights when applied to acquired language impairments.